Ellis, Elizabeth MarrkilyiGreen, JenniferKral, Inge2025-06-242025-06-241934-5275http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85137974278&partnerID=8YFLogxKhttps://hdl.handle.net/1885/733764670In 2018, a collection of some 60 edited and subtitled films, resulting from a documentation project (2012–2018) in the Ngaanyatjarra Lands on verbal arts of the Western Desert, was ready to be returned to the Ngaanyatjarra community. In this case study, we describe the journey of this return and the cultural, ethical, and technological issues that we negotiated in the process. From the archived collection lodged with PARADISEC (Pacific and Regional Archive for Digital Sources in Endangered Cultures), we developed a workflow that harvested selected media and their associated metadata and transferred them to LibraryBox, a portable digital file distribution tool designed to enable local delivery of media via the LibraryBox wi-fi hotspot. We detail here the return of the curated collection in a series of community film festivals in the Ngaanyatjarra communities and via the delivery of media from LibraryBox to individual mobile phones. We also discuss the return of a digital collection of historical photographs of Ngaanyatjarra people and strategies to re-inscribe such old records for new purposes. These endeavours are motivated by the imperative to ‘mobilise’ our collection of Western Desert Verbal Arts by making the recordings available to the Ngaanyatjarra community. We anticipate that the lessons we learnt in the process will contribute to better design for local solutions in the iterative cycle of documentation, archiving, and return.Firstly we thank all those in the Ngaanyatjarra community who participated in this research over many years. We thank Julia Miller, Nick Thieberger, and Marco LaRosa, who assisted with the workflow from PARADISEC to LibraryBox, Claudia Rowe, and Bergen O’Brien who helped with film editing, Gary Proctor from Warburton Arts Project, and Franco Saliba, Warakurna Community youth worker who assisted with the film screenings, and Christine Bruderlin who assisted with the design and production of the small 2018 limited edition book and postcards. Ellis has been supported by an ELDP (Endangered Languages Documentation Programme) (SG0187) and an ARC (Australian Research Council) Discovery Indigenous Award (IN150100018); Green by ARC Fellowships (DP110102767, DE160100873); and Kral by an ARC DECRA Award (DE120100720). We thank Jane Simpson, Co-CI (IN150100018) and the ARC Centre of Excellence for the Dynamics of Language (CE140100041). We also thank two anonymous reviewers for their constructive feedback on an earlier version of this chapter. 11 Preliminary documentation of respect registers was undertaken by Kral and Ellis 2010–2011 for a Language Recording and Archiving Project for Ngaanyatjarra Media supported by a Maintenance of Indigenous Languages and Recordings (MILR) Program grant.21enPublisher Copyright: © Licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 InternationalArchival accessArchivingEndangered languagesIndigenous australiaNgaanyatjarra languageVerbal arts202085137974278